The crew of the Titanic submarine that dived to the wreckage of the Titanic may have been aware of the impending disaster, according to a new $50 million lawsuit filed this week by the family of French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, who died in the accident.
According to the lawsuit, the passengers "experiencing terror and mental anguish" toward the ocean floor, contrary to plans previously described by the widow of another crew member.
The crew aboard the Titan submarine, which exploded in the North Atlantic last June while diving towards the wreck of the Titanic, were probably aware in the last moments that they were going to die, according to the family of Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a French explorer who died in the explosion. by the lawsuit filed in the past few days, The Guardian .
The "Mr. Known as the Titanic, the explorer has made 37 previous dives to the wreck and was aboard the submarine in the tragedy, in which all five crew members - including British explorer Hamish Harding, British Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, and Stockton Rush, CEO of tour operator OceanGate Expeditions, has died.
The man's family filed a "wrongful death" against OceanGate, which manufactured the sub and managed the dive, and which has since ceased operations, at least according to its website. The lawsuit accuses the company and its late CEO of negligence, alleging that many details about the ship's defects and deficiencies were deliberately withheld from the French explorer.
"The catastrophic explosion that claimed the life of Nargeolet was directly attributable to the persistent carelessness, irresponsibility and negligence of OceanGate, Rush and other defendants"
– reads the lawsuit demanding at least 50 million dollars. According to the indictment, the crew could also have known before the explosion what awaited them in the next few minutes.
Although the exact cause of the failure may never be determined, experts agree that the Titan crew would have recognized exactly what was happening. The vaunted "acoustic safety system" would have alerted the crew that the carbon fiber hull had cracked under the extreme pressure - prompting the captain to release the weight and attempt to abort the action. Common sense dictates that the crew knew before the tragedy that they were going to die
- says the memorandum, which adds that since the safety mechanism - which would have lowered the weight in response to a crack in the hull - did not work, the crew
"you could hear the crackling sound of the carbon fibers growing more intense as the weight of the water weighed down on the Titan's hull".
According to the calculations of experts, fully aware of the ship's irreversible failure, they could have continued the descent, experiencing terror and mental anguish, before the Titan finally crashed
they added in the lawsuit.
Last week, Rory Golden, who was on the submarine's support vessel at the time of the disaster, spoke of the atmosphere of fear and false hope during the failed rescue attempt. "We had the image of them down there, running out of oxygen in the freezing cold, terribly scared and terrified," Nargeolet's friend Rory Golden told the BBC .
Record attempt and listening to music in the pitch dark
The widow of British-Pakistani billionaire Shahzada Dawood previously said that the captain of the submarine had warned the crew that they would be diving in total darkness and without lights to the wreckage of the ship that sank in 1912, so the passengers were advised to take their favorite music with them on the long dive to don't get bored.
The billionaire's wife also mentioned that her son also took a Rubik's cube with him because he wanted to break the record for placing the cube underwater, while her husband was planning to listen to a lecture by Paul-Henri Nargeolet on the way.
Before the dive, the widow was impressed by the professionalism she saw on the expedition's staff. According to his account, the launch of the submersible went according to plan, but a short time later he heard crew members talking among themselves that they had lost contact with the ship. He then went to the bridge of the escort ship, where he was informed that he needn't worry, as communication problems often occur. They were also assured - as they refer to in the lawsuit that has just been filed - that if the submarine gets into trouble, they will release the ballast and rise to the surface.
Days later, the woman waited for news about her missing family on the same escort ship, but then she learned that the wreckage of the submarine had been found. After the disaster, the US Coast Guard launched a maritime commission of inquiry to investigate the incident to determine the causes. A public hearing is scheduled for September. A spokesperson for OceanGate declined to comment on the matter.
Featured image: OceanGate Expeditions / Handout / AFP
